Court Filings Allege Matt Gaetz Attended Drug-Fueled Sex Party With 17-Year-Old at Center of Alleged Trafficking Scandal

It’s a banner week for Republican sex pests, as Matt Gaetz saw Mark Robinson’s weird porn forum posts yesterday and Chris Rufo’s leaked Ashley Madison e-mail and raised them a potential crime. NotUs reported on new court filings allegedly placing Gaetz at a “drug-fueled sex party in 2017 with the 17-year-old girl at the center of the alleged sex trafficking scandal, according to legal documents filed to a Florida federal court shortly before midnight Thursday, which cite sealed affidavits from three eyewitness testimonies.”

Some of the testimony comes from Chris Dorworth, a lobbyist and Gaetz’s friend who owns the house where the party took place. NotUs highlighted one sworn affidavit from a young woman at the party, which “claimed the teenage girl was naked, partygoers were there to ‘engage in sexual activities,’ and ‘alcohol, cocaine, ecstasy … and marijuana’ were present.”

This is not the first time Gaetz has found himself in the middle of this sex trafficking scandal, as the Department of Justice investigated these claims due to testimony from Joel Greenberg, who worked as Florida’s tax collector and was Gaetz’s one-time friend. Greenberg pleaded guilty to sex trafficking of a minor, identity theft, stalking, wire fraud and conspiracy to bribe a public official in 2021 and subsequently cooperated with federal prosecutors before being sentenced to 11 years in prison. In early 2023, the DOJ announced they would not charge Gaetz in their probe.

In March of this year, Matt Gaetz was served with a subpoena to sit for a deposition in a civil lawsuit over the allegations that he had sex with a 17-year-old, and earlier this summer, the House Ethics Committee conducted a string of interviews with women who Joel Greenberg paid to allegedly attend these parties and have sex with the men there.

These filings are the first sworn testimony in public court which reference these longstanding allegations against Gaetz that the DOJ and the House Ethics Committee have both investigated.

Between Jeffrey Epstein and Diddy, it’s clear that sex trafficking among the powerful is pervasive, and there are years of allegations following Gaetz around Florida and our nation’s capital. While this specific instance will likely get outsized coverage in proportion to the hatred that Matt Gaetz inspires, do not lose sight of the system being outlined in these allegations. Whether Gaetz himself is implicated in this is left to the legal system to decide, but what’s clear at this point is that there is more than enough smoke around these stories to suggest there is some kind of fire beneath it that urgently needs to be put out.